"MOM! GET OUT OF HERE!"
Maddie topples the wine glass off of the table, and begins to take out of the castle room before I can even stand up. More loud noises echo out of our reach. Something is causing a great havoc all of a sudden... and I know exactly what it is.
Damn it. I was expecting showtime to not be so early...
The thudding and banging continue as I chase after her, calling her name in genuine concern, because I know what she is racing towards. She, of course, ignores my pleas, as any mother would, and tries to find her son (whom I assume is righteously getting his ass kicked, as he so often tends to do in my castle).
I knew it was only a matter of time before the boy discovered what truly killed his father. I figured I'd see if I could get a two-for-one kind of deal before I moved in for Maddie. I suppose it's too late now... but no matter.
Let the show begin.
As I chase after her, I remember how long I've been chasing... how long I've been longing. More flashbacks ceaselessly pound against my mind like ping pong, remembering the older days between Maddie and I. I wonder as I follow her racing footsteps if my own seemingly endless corridor is a metaphor of some kind. I've been chasing her for so long, always being pulled away, always being hurled up into the big, stupid arms of the hero. Tonight, she will know her hero isn't dead.
He's me.
I feel like my mind is a straight, thin line, like every hallway... an arrow to Maddie's heart.
As she finally opens the door, she gasps loudly enough to count as an explosion. She sees her boy knocked unconscious on the floor, bruised and beaten, as I had anticipated. He is buried underneath dust and rubble, but so far, there is no sign of his attacker. She rushes to his side, and from her position to check his status, she gives me a scowl.
"You!" she screams. "I knew I couldn't trust you! What have you done?!"
"Maddie-" I plead, now realizing that our former game of musical chairs has ended, and both of us are scrambling to find a proper seat in the room, before we get taken out. "This is actually the one time when you NEED to trust me - or your son, and you, and I - will -"
Just then, a terribly familiar brown, sluggish goop begins to form all over the walls...
Maddie's expression has turned to shock and panic to horror, and something familiar. It's almost as if the memory has summoned an old foe to the scene, and it reacts with matched hysterics. The walls begin to crumble and tear apart, sinking into the readings of everyone's panic. It's a vicious cycle, as the more Maddie and I become unhinged, so too, does the world around us... literally. The Sludge is rageful... wrathful. It will not stop until the paradox of our emotions is resolved.
What Clockwork had revealed to me, after I bested him in battle, was that the Spectral Emotional Ecto Sludge, was in itself, now like a ghost. It had been feeding on all of our collective misery since that day... at least, mine. The tickets were not made of a very absorbant material, to say the least... but when I held them with the intention of winning Maddie over, that intention resonated. Eating the tickets fed the Sludge knowledge of our curious triangle. It had been festering for far too long.
It wanted Fenton.
Perhaps the whole time, fate was trying to rectify what I never could.
Needless to say, I had been attempting to track it down for quite some time since learning of its intention... but it had always eluded me... just like Maddie... until tonight - also just like Maddie - it showed up at my door... exactly one hour before she did.
But now, Maddie has finally returned to see the weight of her own grief and mine combined and threatening to kill us both. Now, she is in danger.
I have to show my true form; no need to hide it from her anymore.
("Going Ghost!" is still such a stupid catch phrase, by the way.)
Once transformed again into my Plasmius ways, I try my best to shield her from the oncoming debris, generated by the Sludge. My powers shine in kinetic lightning, phasering rocks and expensive items from other rooms that the monster is summoning with its rampage to fly at us. I shoot many a blast at every slimy, oozing piece of matter I see... but it seems completely unaffected.
"VLAD!" she screams, "GET US OUT OF HERE!"
"I can't!" I shout back, trying to talk over the rumbling bricks and pillars.
"What the hell do you mean you CAN'T?!"
A few more useless blasts at the Sludge dishearten me. I have to admit something to Maddie that normally a man of my status would not let his pride allow... but again, it is the truth.
"Even with all my power," I concede, "I know of no way to stop this thing!"
Maddie is cradling Danny, holed up in storage of the room's corner now that seems shadowed away from the Sludge. I can see in her eyes that even amidst the panic, her mind is racing to assess new information. The look she gives me almost continues our conversation in the other room without us having to.
"The... Sludge...!" Maddie calls. "The Sludge killed Jack?!"
The room stabilizes now slightly as if our goopy enemy wants to answer. My hands tire from wielding my powers.
"Do you remember?" I ask her in the becoming calm of the Sludge's storm. "Do you remember how you felt on that day you say me, before the accident - before the madness?"
"What?" - Again, Maddie is confused.
"I was 'looking sharp' - remember?"
"Vlad - what -"
"Maddie! You - me, Jack - we've all been feeding this thing for years. All of the battles - all of the madness - all of the scorn and jealousy and all of your research - it can wield it all against us! This is more powerful than all of us combined... and we can't all combine anymore!"
"It's..."
- "It's just you and me now, Maddie..." I finish for her.
"Vlad... what have we done...?"
Maddie's resignation to her fear, like the starting of an engine, roars again the Sludge to rear its ugly head, in its true form, this time, as well. A goop that pours from the walls piles into the corner adjacent to Maddie and Danny. It begins to grow bigger, and bigger. Ominously, it assembles itself like a creature looking far too big for a human, and far too... solid, for a ghost or goop. It's changing its properties fast, drinking in Maddie's fear and my yearning. The Sludge has grown up into a villainous, vile dasdardly, worthy of my army...
But I would never command anything to hurt Maddie! - (the boy - sure - and often - but -)
"VLAD!"
Remembering that day I first encountered the sludge, I reach into my pocket for my only real idea as to how to combat this predicament. In my suit pocket, now slightly stained with wine, is a long, yellow envelope.
"What... what is that?" Maddie trembles as the monster moves towards her.
"Well!" I gleefully say, recalling our old life, "it's an 'ace in the hole' - a secret weapon I've been saving to wield for a few days, wrestling with this decision. Every tragic love story needs a sacrifice - right, Maddie?"
"What are you TALKING about?!" she screeches. "Are you going to... mail a letter while this thing kills me?!"
I grimace. Carefully, my powerful hand opens the envelope, and pulls out an obnoxiously long piece of paper.
"Maddie," I decree, while savoring the mere seconds before the monster finds her. "They finally sold me the team."
"... What?!"
"- The Packers, Maddie - they made me an offer. All I have to do is sign it and-"
"VLAD!" Maddie screams, now visibly in tears, "HOW CAN YOU BE SO SELFISH RIGHT NOW?! DO YOU WANT ME TO-"
"I WANT YOU TO SEE THIS!" I scream.
"See WHAT!?"
With time running out, I make my move.
"None of this, Maddie - NONE OF THIS means anything to me anymore - not the Packers, not this world or the world unseen - absolutely NOTHING - if I do not have you. Why you? - Why YOU? - I'll tell you why - because you make me want to be GOOD, Maddie. These ghosts have been restless for so long - all because of our tragic romance. You know in your heart that I could have given you more than he ever could, and YOU KNOW IT, TOO - YOU UGLY, BIG PILE OF SHIT!"
Without a single flinch of hesitation, I fling the unsigned contract into the monster.
It sinks like a fish into Jello into its back. The sacrifice has been made.
Maddie screams.
Silence holds for a few seconds now in her echo.
The monster stands still.
The monster roars.
"SHIT!"
My mind is racing for a way to kill this thing. If none of the Fentons could do it, it's up to me.
Wait...
None of the Fentons...
"Maddie!"
As the room is engulfed in an ominous gold glow, and the Sludge creature inches towards Maddie, who is too tired to try and fight, time almost stops as it did in all of my terrible encounters with Jack that changed my life. Now it all is starting to make sense.
Maddie hangs her head down, accepting her fate, and Danny's.
"Goodbye, Vlad... I..."
"You..."
The final puzzle piece of the Sludge mystery fits, and as it raises a hand that has hardened from goo to solid stone to crush the love of my life, I cry out to her.
"SAY YOU LOVE ME, MADDIE!"
"What-?"
"SAY YOU LOVE ME!"
"But I -"
"Jack always knew it, Maddie - he knew that we had something that he could never have with you - never did. He was his own worst enemy. It was only a matter of time before his own mistakes caught up with him... but you... you're so brilliant, Maddie - so wonderful and truly good! You don't deserve this! He wouldn't have wanted things to end this way! And it can only end this way if you refuse to see what you and I have been running from for YEARS-"
- "VLAD! I LOVE YOU!" -
What...?
Hell freezes over.
The monster crumbles into dust.
As the castle starts to further rip itself apart in resolution of the monster's feelings (and ours) I use all of my strength to create a shield around me and Maddie (and begrudgingly, the boy as well). In flashes of light so bright that death itself would lose focus, I nearly pass out from the toll of the ecto-shield.
(Thanks for helping, Danny. Little shit.)
I swear I must be dead. I swear I must be.
Is this Heaven?
Maddie is resting in my arms now as her son had been resting in hers. The castle walls around us have crumbled... and she loves me.
"The... experiment..." Maddie groans, groggily struggling to stay awake. "It... was... my fault."
"There is no such thing as fault, my love," I whisper in her ear as I dry her cheeks, "only fate, now."
"... Fate..." Maddie whispers. "Could you... really have been mine... all along?"
Exhausted, she fades away into a sleep that weighs lovingly on me. I am overjoyed.